HIV/AIDS: The neglected illness

Luca Milstein

Humanities 10D

5/28/13

(http://www.fightaidsghana.org/?page_id=179)

Imagine if your race led people to assume that you were carrying a serious fatal virus. Not only would that be prejudice at its worse, but also instead of trying to care for you, such as making sure you have the proper medicine, that you have doctor's appointements,  people would neglect you and fear you.  Sadly this really did happen. In the 1990's in North America. Almost all Haitians were assumed to have either the virus HIV or full blown AIDS. Little did the accusers know what was really going on.

HIV is a virus that only infects human beings and  that survives in the fluids of the human body: blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk. AIDS is the final stage of HIV, when the body is completely  taken over by the illness.    “HIV attacks your t-cells, uses them to make copies of itself, then when HIV had destroyed so many of your cells it becomes Aids.”  (Aids.gov, What is HIV/Aids?, 06/06/2012). HIV/AIDS is a very dangerous fatal condition  and the virus can be passed from one person to another through such ways as sexual intercourse, the sharing of contaminated needles, or in utero from a mother to her baby.  HIV and full blown AIDS remain a worldwide problem, the epidemic of this condition has reached all parts of the globe. A recent statistic recorded that  in 2010, 31.6-35.2 million people on the planet were living with Aids. 1.6-1.9 million people died from AIDS that year (Worldwide Hiv & Aids statistics, Avert.com). 

Equal in seriousness to the illness  is the prejudice that surrounds those infected  with HIV/AIDS. An example of  this prejudice that takes place simply because of the virus can be seen in this event: In the 1990’s there was a belief that HIV/Aids originated from Haiti. Many Haitians suffered because of this widespread belief. A sad, but true, quote from an essay written by a Haitian student during this time, showing an example of this ignorant belief is, “I don’t think homosexuals spread aids. My doctor told me that Haitians created aids by having sex with monkeys.”  (Farmer and Kim) The fact that a doctor said this is shocking enough. This is pure ignorance-- the Haitians did not “create” Aids. People started calling Aids a “Haitian disease”, as the Idea that Aids started in Haiti, grew more and more popular. Haitians in America were being asked if they had HIV/Aids. Yet it only got worse, “One heard of mothers who would not permit their children to attend school with Haitian students;...of families evicted for having ‘black skin and a French name’”. (Farmer and Kim). So my opinion on this tragedy is that it was just sickening and sad, that such a thing happened  to the Haitian community.  Imagine if you were being kicked out of your home just because of the fact that you were Haitian. If a guy named "Joey" is mean to me I don’t think that all people named "Joey" are mean. The accusers did not have a clear Idea of what was actually going on in Haiti with the problems of HIV/AIDS.

The truth was that in Haiti during the 1990's, AIDS/HIV was never that huge of a problem. There never were over 20,000 deaths child or adult because of AIDS/HIV. A little bit over 200,000 people were living with HIV. 1 out of 100 people had HIV at this time (statistics from powerpoint from unaids.com). In Humanities class I read a book called Mountains beyond Mountains written by Tracy Kidder. It is the true story about a doctor named Paul Farmer who went around the world with the goal to cure serious infectious diseases. A quote that shows more compassion towards HIV/Aids is, "Zammi Lasante had built schools and houses and communal sanitiation and water systems...vaccinated all the children...greatly reduced both local malnutrition and infant mortality...launched programs for women's literacy and the prevention of AIDS." (kidder). This quote shows that even though the Haiti situation wasn't that bad there was still work being done to help those suffering from the illness. That is the attitude needed  to succeed, not abandoning people because you assume they have a fatal condition. No matter what, always helping people in their time of need. 

This topic is important because this showed a time of ignorance that still echoes today. These events prove that one should not always assume negative opinions about others. The Haitians suffered physically, emotionally, and financially  all because of a rumor. This rumor became so much more than it ever needed to be, it became a dictator against lives. Today because there are more solutions medically and emotionally, and laws protecting human rights for people with aids, the future is brighter. 

Bibliography

Source 1: (Aids.gov, What is HIV/Aids?, 06/06/2012, http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/what-is-hiv-aids/)

Source 2:  (Anthropology, Accountability and the Prevention of AIDS by Paul Farmer and JIm Young Kim, May 1991, Harvard University, p. 204, p.208, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3813067?seq=2&Search=yes&searchText=aids&searchText=haiti&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Daids%2Bin%2Bhaiti%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&prevSearch=&resultsServiceName=null, ) 

Source 3: (Worldwide Hiv & Aids statistics, Avert.com).

Source 4: (Mountains beyond Mountains, 2003, Random House Inc by Tracy Kidder, p.22)

Source 5: (statistics from powerpoint from UNAIDS.com)